


Demolition

by knucklewhite



Category: The Prophecy (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2754419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knucklewhite/pseuds/knucklewhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romania, 1986. A boy makes a deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demolition

**Author's Note:**

> Approximately 2.5 people have seen _The Prophecy: Uprising_ , but if you have and feel the need to enthuse about Sean Pertwee and/or John Light, please come [talk to me](http://knucklewhite.tumblr.com). I offer Twinkies in exchange for your soul!

_Romania, 1986_

—

Dani has been perched on the end of the bench for what seems like forever when the man in black walks up and sits at the other end of it.

His mama has never been this late before. The old men outside the café across the road have played through two whole games of backgammon on their rickety metal table, and Dani's feet are numb to the point of sherbet fizziness. Until the stranger sat down, the bench was a fighter plane: a needle-nosed MiG-23, slicing through the clouds over Bucharest like a dart thrown by some great giant. Now, though, it's just the same old bench, squatting crookedly outside the derelict tobacconists on the main street.

Dani draws his knees closer to his chest and hugs his schoolbag to his side. He sighs and peers sideways at the man with scowl.

The stranger sits, perfectly straight-backed, looking out across the road. His hands lie folded on his lap, pale and still as paper against his black trousers. He doesn't appear to be paying any attention to Dani at all, yet Dani can sense a tightness growing in the air between them that usually signals the start of a conversation. Dani would rather escape the inevitable adult interrogation, but his mother had commanded him to wait right there on the bench for her, so he rocks back on his heels and sighs again. Loudly.

"Your mother isn't coming, Dani," the stranger says, conversationally. He doesn't turn his head. His gaze appears to be fixed on the two men playing backgammon across the road.

Dani glances around, but there are no other Danis waiting for their mothers in the vicinity, so the man must be talking to him.

"She is coming," Dani says, knowing full well that this is the wrong response. The two correct responses ('I'm not allowed to talk to strangers' and 'How do you know my name?’) sit on his tongue for a moment, but Dani swallows them whole before they can grow roots and trip him.

"I'm afraid not," the man says. "Lucia was taken ill at the nursery today. Your mother has taken her to Doctor Popescu."

Lucia. Always Lucia. Ever since Dani's little sister was born, it's been as if he's faded into black-and-white in the eyes of his parents; he feels as jittery and unreal as the people in the films they watch in their two hours of government-allotted television time. Lucia is everything he's not: blonde where he's dark, happy where he's sullen. She doesn't cry. She doesn't have nightmares about the things that whisper under the bed. She's always smiling. _My angel_ , Mama calls her.

Though the man's accent is strange and his clothing entirely too pristine, Dani eliminates him from the 'stranger' category without further thought — the man knows Mama and Lucia and Doctor Popescu, after all — and shuffles closer to him on the bench.

"Shit," Dani says, sneaking a glance to his left. The man is still staring straight ahead, but Dani can see his lips curve up briefly. Satisfied, Dani continues, "Mama said not to walk home by myself."

"She's right. That wouldn't be advisable."

"How am I supposed to get home then?" For a moment, Dani pictures his wooden bench transforming into that MiG-23 and spiriting him back to the housing estate. He can almost see the new apartment blocks from above: they'd sit in neat, grey rows, like stacks of concrete matchboxes.

"I'm here to take you home," the man says.

"You know where I live?"

The man shifts his gaze from the road and nods at Dani, looking at him for the first time, and, for a moment, the man's eyes are all pupil, as solid black and shiny as the cherry-sized marble Dani’s friend Andrei always taunts him with. The Wrecking Ball, Andrei calls it. Then the man tilts his face to the warmth of the sun and closes his eyes, and when he opens them again they're perfectly normal, the common sort of flecked, greeny-blue marbles everyone in class has in droves. Dani has three of them in his bag right now.

"We should go now, Dani," the man says.

Dani is reluctant to go anywhere with the man with black marbles for eyes, so he stalls, scuffing his shoes against the edge of the bench and watching the slow trundle of a car along the road. It's a bright autumn afternoon and the paint-peeling shops look almost cheerful in the glare of the sun. Housewives queue outside the co-op, ration cards in hand, squabbling over the least rotten potatoes. Someone has drawn a smiling face in the grime that coats the café window.

Dani casts a calculating glance at the shop across the road and wonders if he can turn this situation to his advantage, perhaps turn his bench plane into the real model plane he's had his eye on for weeks, or even convince the man to buy him one of those huge black marbles. It seems fated.

"I don't know if I should go with a stranger," he says, slyly.

The man laughs. It relaxes his posture, makes him look a little less stern. He unfolds his tall frame from the bench and turns to face Dani, and Dani peers up at him, shielding his eyes so he can see the man where he's silhouetted by the sun.

"You want me to bribe you,” the man says, "is that it? I'm usually the one initiating the deals, you know."

The second part of the man's statement makes no sense, but Dani knows all about bribes; they've taught him about those in the patriotism classes at school. He nods. The fizzing in his feet travels up his legs and settles in the hollow of his stomach.

"Okay then." The man holds out his hand. "Quickly now."

 

—

 

They're halfway across the road when Dani hears the crash.

At first he thinks the noise is just another demolition charge, a common enough sound as old Bucharest is dismantled around its inhabitants' ears. But then the screaming starts. He tries to look back over his shoulder, but his hand is clenched in the man's cool grip, and the man continues walking across the road at his leisurely pace, not speeding up or slowing down, despite the commotion behind them.

They stop on the other side of the road, and, when the man finally loosens his grip enough to let Dani turn to survey the scene, Dani feels like someone has poured a bucket of cold water over his head. The man's grip on him is, perhaps, the only thing keeping him standing.

The bench is gone.

A lorry is embedded in the side of the tobacconists, half overturned. One wheel spins lazily, ripped from its axle.

The hairs on Dani's arms prickle and quiver like little antennae.

"I was sitting right there," he says.

"Yes," the man agrees.

"I would have been killed."

"Yes."

The man continues to hold Dani's hand as they stand watching bystanders drag the driver out of the cab. The driver's body flops like a rolled blanket. The side of his head is a mass of misshapen gore. Dani has seen two dead bodies before: his grandma laid out on her bed like a wax doll, and old man Sava, who dropped dead last year whilst raking his garden, but this is the first time he's forced to picture himself in their place. It leaves him feeling washed out and distant, like he really has faded to nothing but static and shades of grey.

He stares up at the man. "Did you know?"

The man peers down at him, expressionless.

"You knew, didn't you?" Dani is as sure of this fact as he is of the ground under his feet and the sky over his head.

After a long pause, the man says, "Do you like doughnuts, Dani?"

Dani is thrown by the question. Of course he likes doughnuts. He nods up at the man.

"Let’s get you something sweet, then," the man says. "A deal’s a deal, after all."

In the distance, a forest of cranes fringes the skyline, crowding around the shell of the unfinished People's Palace like a pack of sentinels.


End file.
